Margaret's birthday party

Birthday parties for the toddler set can be pretty extravagant affairs. Some people rent out a "special" venue where the kids can run wild. Others hire some sort of performer to keep the kids entertained. Regardless of what people do, the events are always seem to be a serious amount of work for an hour or so of entertaining a bunch of toddlers/pre-school kids.

With that background, we set about planning Margaret's fourth birthday party a month or so ago. For prior birthdays, we've had family affairs, but for some reasons, Abby decided that we'd have a full-blown birthday party for Margaret this year. Which requires a number of decisions. Who do you invite? One possibility would be the party with a small number of select friends. Once we decided not to do this, we basically had to invite everyone. After all, if you're not being very selective, how can you not invite some kids from the preschool room at daycare? And you have to invite the neighborhood kids too.

Next, where do you hold the party? Initially, we thought about renting a local playroom that specializes in this type of event. My personal view was that we should just hold it at the local park. The kids can run around and entertain themselves, and everyone will be happy. What's the point of renting out a place when the kids won't care anyway?

In the end, we invited everyone from the preschool room, plus neighborhood kids and family friends, and held the party at a local park. We ended up with 25-30 kids, all of whom had a grand time running around, checking out bugs, and generally playing in the park. We got way too much food, but everyone seemed to enjoy the cake. And everyone seemed to have fun.

So I'd consider the party to be a success. We probably won't do this again in the future. Unless we do the small party with far fewer attendees. I know that Margaret had fun, but like anything with kids, it's not clear that she had more fun than she would have had with a party that required less work on our part. And that's what I'm looking for - something that makes the kids happy without much work. (I told a pregnant friend at work: "In all likelihood, anything that you think is cool, neat or useful about toys or other stuff for your kid, your kid won't care about." Words of wisdom, I think.)

The main purpose of this post is the pictures. Abby has been bugging me to post pictures from the birthday party, and when I said, "But they aren't any good," she said, "I don't care. I want those pictures." So here they are. All of them.